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Deep Green: Going deeper

Yay - Rex Weyler's latest Deep Green column has arrived!

Rex Weyler was a director of the original Greenpeace Foundation, the editor of the organisation’s first newsletter, and a cofounder of Greenpeace International in 1979. He was a photographer and reporter on the early Greenpeace whale and seal campaigns, and has written one of the best and most comprehensive histories of the organisation, Greenpeace (Raincoast, 2004). His book, Blood of the Land, a history of the American Indian Movement, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. “Deep Green” is Rex’s monthly column, reflecting on the roots of activism, environmentalism, and Greenpeace’s past, present, and future. The opinions here are his own.

Since the late Pleistocene, 100,000 years ago, when a few thousand Homo sapiens poked around Africa, Asia, and the Mediterranean, human population has doubled 22 times. We have one more such doubling left, and that's it. Human population will likely level off at 10 to 14 billion sometime around 2100, exceeding the Earth's carrying capacity. Mass human starvations are already underway in degraded environments.
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Last chance to Make A NOise about Heathrow expansion

Celebrity mums say no to Heathrow

Actor Rula Lenska and journalist Rosie Boycott join other celeb mums in a vigil against Heathrow expansion in Parliament Square

As the date for the government's decision on Heathrow's third runway hurtles towards us (they'll be deciding in June or July, we think), a whole gamut of voices has been speaking out against the agenda for airport expansion that will destroy our chances of slowing climate change.

At the risk of sounding like a bad joke, an actress and a bishop (OK then, an archbishop) have both joined the fray, along with several celebrity mums and the head of the Sustainable Development Commission. Eclectic, eh? They're all calling on the government to shelve its plans for airport expansion.

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Final findings for the Faslane Five

No new nuclear weapons

A Greenpeace volunteer on the boom at Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland

I don’t know if your remember our Trident Tour last year - that five week frenzy of Faslane blockading, crane climbing, arrests, solitary confinement, losing a ship, getting it back again, bearing witness, gigs, press conferences, political events and rallies.

Well, it’s been a long time coming but, over a year after the event, I can give you the final results of the legal wranglings that ensued.

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The prince and the rubber tapper: stop trashing rainforests

The lungs of the world

Yesterday, the 'guardian angel' of Brazil's environment, Marina Silva, threw in the towel and quit her post as Brazil's environment minister. She told President Lula that her efforts to protect the Amazon "were being thwarted by powerful business lobbies".

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Greenpeace stops the trading of endangered species

Time and tuna are running out

You'd probably find the idea of an event for trading in rhinoceros horns or tiger skins pretty shocking. But today, 1,600 companies from 80 countries came together in Brussels to trade all sorts species, including some threatened and endangered ones: fish, also known as our global marine life.

The Brussels Seafood Expo is the world's biggest sea food trading event, where species on the brink of collapse - like Mediterranean bluefin tuna and North Sea cod - are, literally, served up on a plate.

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Weekly Green Web: get a £77,000 job. Or a T-shirt.

Stepping into Jamie's shoes this week, here's a quick round up of tasty green stuff we've seen on the web:

  • Coal is so clean and fresh that Gordon Brown brushes his teeth with it. He really does. There's a picture to prove it.
  • More greenback than green is Dan Tague's wonderful origami activism (if you really like it, check the full gallery).
  • Finally, your chance to green up the aviation industry: BAA is looking for two Heads of Corporate Responsibility, and Plane Stupid is inviting its supporters to apply. You may as well - if you get the job, you'll earn up to £77,000. If you don't, you could still win a Plane Stupid T-shirt...
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Make throwies not runways

No 3rd runway on a Thames barge

There's been more creative campaigning in the capital from anti-Heathrow expansion activists - this time, a message glowing softly in the dark for any evening strollers along London's South Bank to see.

'No 3rd Runway' has been written onto the side of an old, defunct barge on the Thames, just near the Oxo Tower, with tiny magnetic LEDs (like the ones shown in this Make Throwies Not Bombs video). It's yet another voice in the growing opposition to Heathrow expansion - along with the four mayoral candidates, a whole raft of organisations and, well, tens of thousands of you. Get involved!

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Don't panic: Bush has a cunning climate plan

Less than a year after the IPCC warned the world that global emissions need to peak within the next 10 years (and then fall sharply), Bush - with much fanfare - has unveiled his new, cunning climate change plan: emit more for the next 17 years, and make sure developing countries help pay for what the US and the industrialised world has already emitted.

His address yesterday came during the latest Major Emitters Meeting - a series of meetings set up by Bush to undermine run in parallel to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change process (the UN's process being inconvenient because it wants mandatory rather than voluntary emissions targets, and says the industrialised world should bear the burden of responsibility for historical emissions).

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Would you care about climate change more if you lived in a mud hut?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the Greenpeace ship MV Esperanza in 2002

That's what Archbishop Desmond Tutu is asking the leaders of the most polluting economies, living up to his reputation for calling a spade a spade in, um, spades. Read more »

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This Bill's Got No Balls

That's the eye watering message from our friends over at I Count. They're talking of course about the Climate Change Bill - and are asking you to put the virtual squeeze on your MP, to make sure the bill gets the balls it needs to stop climate change:

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